


Healing; Crystals

by techieturnover



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, and finding in each other a little bit of connection in (un)shared history, just two people having a chat about what makes us believe the things we do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29305266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/techieturnover/pseuds/techieturnover
Summary: Maria, Bert, (and I), have a chat about belief, healing, crystals, and roots.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9
Collections: Maria DeLuca Healing Crystals Celebration





	Healing; Crystals

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I just love Bert and would like 1000x more fics with him in it. Also having a lot of feelings about displacement that I shoved onto him and Maria because I can <3 Enjoy! Unbeta'd and posted into the void!

Maria feels a pull and she looks up from collecting the cushions and chairs to see Bert reading the course description she had printed and taped to the folding table at the edge of the driveway. 

Something - the Something she has learned over the years is more trustworthy than some things - tells her that Bert is searching. For what, she can’t guess by the small snippets flitting through her mind’s eye. She finishes piling the pillows and ties them together so they don’t blow away before making her way over.

“So how did this compare to Pilates?” She asks when he looks up. 

“Good,” he says, that upbeat tone that always seems to affect him coloring his voice. As if he’s pleasantly surprised by every word that comes out of his own mouth. He presses on when she raises an eyebrow. 

“No, I enjoyed it, really. You know I’ve always felt like there was something inside me that I couldn’t get to and - I don’t know I feel like maybe I got to see a part of it today.”

Maria leans on the table and shields her eyes from the sun with a hand. “You know most of this stuff is made up, right?”

“What do you mean?”

Maria feels her eyes roll. 

“Come on, screaming as loud as you can to awaken an inner warrior? Ohms in the desert? All of this is just-” she gestures, trying to find the words. “It’s all just ridiculous stuff that a white people believe is a spiritual journey to connect them to their ancestors.” 

“Well yeah but - it comes from somewhere, right?” 

Maria shrugs. “Sure, I guess.”

“You don’t believe any of it?” 

She thinks about how many times she’s tried to use every form of healing magic she can to help her mother.

“I guess I want to believe it, more than I actually do.” 

Bert is quiet for a few moments. He walks over to the other table she hasn’t broken down yet, examining the stones she has laid out. They’re a variety of cuts - smooth, round, rough, and Maria is sure some of them aren’t even real. Dyed, or completely fake. One time when she was small her mother had brought her to the reservation to visit with Alex’s mother. She had shown them how to tell a real turquoise stone from a fake one. The one that sits on her table now is most definitely not real.

But they are beautiful. Maria looks down at the hematite she’s absently been twisting around her fingers. The black stone is so warm from the desert sun that it almost does feel alive under her fingers. It would be easy to believe it was imbued with some form of sentience.

The myriad of stones continues to glisten, and Bert picks one up - a dense piece of smoky quartz that Maria had liked because of the solidness of the stone. 

“What are these supposed to do, really?” he asks, holding it up so that the sun hits the edge of the stone. 

The answer she’d normally give seems inappropriate here. Normally, whatever the person wants to hear is what Maria says, guided by her ability to read people and years of practice upselling at the bar. But she gets the feeling she would regret it, if she did that now. She gets the feeling Bert is genuinely looking for something in the answer she gives. When her silence makes him look over at her, she shrugs.

“They do whatever you want to believe they do.” His brow furrows. “I mean, every culture has a different belief - which stones are used for healing, or luck, or protection. So what the stone does for you, I guess, depends on what you believe it will do.”

“But you don’t think they do anything?” 

“I think they do something.” She takes the large clear quartz hanging from her neck and holds it up. It sparkles, multi-colored in the bright sunlight, opaque but still alive. “This stone makes me happy. I like how heavy it is, but it still feels like it’s alive inside.”

“But that doesn’t mean I think it has magical healing properties like I tell people in my classes.,” she continues. “People - white people mostly, but I’ve definitely fallen prey to it, too - we want something to magically fix our problems. But the people who really believe this stuff - who know it and have had it passed down to them - they know that all this stuff - stones and healing plants and everything - it takes knowledge and work to do it right.”

She picks up the brightly colored lapis lazuli stone from the table and smiles wryly. “I can’t just pick this up and become a genius.”

“So you’re saying that like with everything, white people expect the results without doing the work.”

Maria presses her lips together and smiles conspiratorially. “Why do you think I make so much money doing psychic readings?”

“Okay but that’s scary, you know.” Bert says, turning and gesturing with his hands. “Like, you are  _ scary  _ good at that.”

Maria laughs at his unease.

“My mom is, too.”

“How is Mimi?” Bert asks, and Maria’s smile falls. She looks at the crystals again. 

“She’s all right. I wish this stuff really did work the way white people think it does, if it meant I could actually help her.”

“You know, my mom always thought that Mimi was the most real woman in this town.” 

Maria turns to look at Bert. They haven’t ever been close - more the sort of acquaintance when you’re two of the five black people in a town filled with wannabe cowboys. But she remembers his mother; a short, slight woman who Maria remembers being taller than, even in high school. At least Maria and her mother have always mostly fit in - fit in with the hippy magical black woman vibe that everyone in town ahd assigned to them. Maria remembers Bert’s mother always dressed in vibrant dresses - yellows and purples and greens, beautiful flowing bodices and her hair tied in a traditional headscarf. She had always looked to Maria like she was daring someone to say something about a Haitian being so far from the Caribbean. But she was always kind to Maria and her mother - always laughing. And Maria remembers now that she had died a few years back.

“Did she believe in this stuff?”

“I don’t know. She kept plants around that she said had healing properties. She always had sage and cedar oil on hand - especially when I was a teenager.” He pauses and laughs, and Maria laughs with him. When he stops, his voice turns sad. “I never learned any of it though, and all the plants died pretty soon after she did.” 

Something in Maria aches at the thought of losing - or never having - all the things her mother has taught her. 

“Do you ever think about going home?”

“This is home,” Bert responds simply. “I’ve been here since I was a kid - and I have people here I wouldn’t want to leave. But I feel - I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I want to believe the stuff she believed to feel closer to her, now that she’s gone.”

Bert is looking down at the table again, his eyes landing on the stones laying in the sun. His hand floats over a large bright yellow stone. 

“What does this one do?”

“It’s Citrine. It’s supposed to bring happiness and good connections into your life.” He considers it. She adds on, “It’s a fake though.” 

Bert laughs, and picks the stone up, holding it in the palm of his hand.

“My mother loved yellow. It was her favorite color.” He pauses and looks over at Maria. “And I think this counts as a good connection, right?” 

Maria laughs. “It’s still ten dollars extra.”

Again Bert smiles, but he pulls out the bill. “I know it’s white people bullshit, but sometimes I wanna believe it anyway. I know so little of my own heritage.”

“We don’t either,” and admitting it feels like a wound Maria wasn’t even sure she had been carrying. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean all this - the crystals and the card tricks. My mom and I don’t know where we came from on my grandmother’s side. She was adopted - I guess I keep doing all of this stuff hoping one day I’ll find something that feels right, you know? Some piece of something that actually does work, not just something made up and stolen from someone else.”

“I hope you find it.” He sounds sincere, and Maria appreciates that.

“I hope you find something too. Unlock that inner goddess.” 

Bert’s laugh really is  _ so  _ loud. But it’s joyful, too. And Maria thinks about how maybe it’s not that Bert is too loud, but everyone else is just so accustomed to being too quiet.

“I definitely unlocked something.”

“If you want to come back, it’s on the house next time.”

“For real?” 

She nods. “Yeah. Anytime you need a space to reconnect. You just gotta promise to make it seem really convincing.” She winks, and Bert does too. 

“Oh I’ll make Anne Evans think I’m having a  _ whole _ spiritual connection over there.”

“Thank you, for talking with me.”

“Sure.”

He turns to go as she finishes packing away the rocks and the tablecloth, folding all the tables and pushing the cushions back into the tote. The sunshine glides across the sand and makes it glow the same color as the stone Bert had taken with him.


End file.
